February 19, 2009

Facebook is one of the Internet’s most popular websites, for consumers and businesses alike. Using Facebook to position yourself or your brand and establish your web presence is relatively painless, and can do a lot for your marketing.

Benefits of Facebook:

Great potential for consumer interaction (much like Twitter) and creating transparency.

Free to low cost.

Targeted, sponsored ads.

Over 175 million users.

Great for locating your target market.

If you track and analyse your traffic, you’ll soon notice how much traffic is being ushered from Facebook, and how to capitalise on this.

There are plenty of Facebook apps out there to make life easier.

The ability to create Facebook Groups and Fan Pages.

Creating a user profile under the name of your brand is the first step, but using Facebook Groups and Fan Pages is the best way to leverage Facebook in order to brand yourself online. Release information, build a database, host discussions and conduct polls, post links, ask and answer questions and further your blog readership.

Here are the pros and cons of the two Facebook services as web presence tools: